In the news

DOE announced $24 million in funding for three collaborative projects in quantum network research to realize distributed quantum computers. A project included in this funding is collaborative research led by Fermilab in partnership with the California Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, the Northwestern University, and Argonne National Laboratory, to develop hyper-entanglement-based networking and error noise-robust correction techniques for developing advanced quantum networks for science discovery.

What is the future of muon colliders? Particle physicists are seeing less challenges in their development than ten years go and are pushing for a muon collider as the P5 report comes out this fall.

Forty years after its discovery, the W boson continues to intrigue scientists. Chris Hays describes recent progress in understanding a surprisingly high measurement of its mass using data from the former CDF experiment at Fermilab.

Current understandings of neutrino-nucleon interactions rely on data from experiments in the 1970s and ’80s. However, by using lattice quantum chromodynamics to predict stronger neutrino-nucleon interactions, scientists can determine oscillation properties of the elusive neutrinos in Fermilab’s DUNE experiment and other neutrino oscillation experiments.

Scientists are using a new machine learning tool called sparse convolutional neural networks, or SCNNs, to analyze data faster and more efficiently than ever before. SCNNs are expected to play a critical role in analyzing the data gathered from the upcoming DUNE experiment.

NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe speaks to Esra Barlas Yücel, a researcher at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, about Fermilab’s most precise measurements of the muon particle’s magnetic wobble.

From Popular Science, August 17, 2023: Breaking the Standard Model would be one of the biggest moments in particle physics history. The Muon g-2 collaboration reported that the muon doesn’t always look like physicists expect it to look, but the collaboration isn’t done. Once they analyze all the remaining data, physicists believe they can make their g minus 2 estimate twice as precise again.

Plans are moving ahead for the liquid nitrogen refrigeration system which will use liquid nitrogen to cool the 17,500 tons of liquid argon that will fill the neutrino detectors at the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility in the Sanford Lab. The system is expected to be built by 2026, and operational underground by the end of 2026 to support the installation of some detector elements, and the operations of the full facility starting in early 2028.

From Le Monde, August 16, 2023: The characteristics muons were analyzed in an ongoing experiment by the Muon g-2 collaboration at Fermilab and the results are shaking up the theory community.

From Universe Today, August 14, 2023: In a recent announcement, scientists at Fermilab and the international Muon g-2 collaboration made the world’s most precise measurement of the muon’s anomalous magnetic moment, improving the precision of their previous measurements by a factor of 2. With this measurement, the collaboration has achieved its goal of decreasing systematic uncertainties caused by experimental imperfections.